To help members better understand what happens when you submit a support ticket, here is a brief overview.

To Open a support ticket, go to Support or Contact Us on the left hand menu, this will take you to the support area.
Here you have 5 options
1. Submit a Ticket - Submit a new ticket.
2. Knowledgebase - Search support articles and find answers to frequently asked questions.
3. Troubleshooter - Use troubleshooter wizards to diagnose and resolve common problems.
4. News - View news articles.
5. Log In - if you already have a support center login (it is different to your StartXchange login) you can login here to view current and previous tickets you opened.

Try the Knowledgebase first - as the name says, it has answers to the more common questions. (and its amazing how many times people ask the same question)

use a valid email address, and do not use one that has an auto-responder or anti-spam filter on it !

include your username

give as full a description of your problem, including what actions you took before, during and after the problem - it saves us asking 'obvious' questions :)

keep the ticket ID in the subject when replying to tickets - it helps us keep track of what has been said previously so we can better diagnose and resolve your problem.

please DO NOT

include html code or pictures (send these as attachments if necessary) - the support center system strips html code out so we will not see it. If you do need to send us html code to explain a problem, copy it to a text file and send it as an attachment.

send us "why have you not replied" emails if we are not replying within a few hours - we have to sleep too, and we are not all in the same timezone as you. We do try to get to tickets as soon as possible, but sometimes delays are invevitable.

send us multiple tickets for the same problem, it does not bring it to our attention any faster, and just slows the whole system down for everyone as we have to read and respond to each ticket separately.

So what happens once you have written your support ticket and sent it?

It is sent to our support center and marked as 'Open' ready for Tim, Cat or Richard to pick it up.
It will be picked up by the first available person, and either transferred to someone more able to deal with your question, or a response sent to you.
If a reply is sent to you, the ticket is marked as 'On Hold' - this means we can see that it has been acted upon and is awaiting a reply from the member.
After 48 hours, if no reply is received from the member, it is then marked as 'Closed' This does not mean you can not ask for more help, it is simply because usually after 48 hours if we receive no reply it means the answer solved the question. You do not need to open a new ticket if you still need the problem resolving, simply reply to the ticket, and it will be moved back to the 'Open' pile.

so a quick summary of ticket status: Open - Ticket is awaiting a reply from Support staff On Hold - Ticket is awaiting a reply from member Closed - Ticket has not received a reply in 48 hours

Goodness me - 53000 credits - how on earth do you achieve that?
My case is a different story- I ever seem to get any credits - my balance s showing 1.1 credit balance no matter how many pages I surfed.